Codes with Parity Conditions on Subsets of Coordinates
Binary codes with the constraint that the codes restricted to certain subsets of columns must be contained in particular codes of the shorter lengths are considered. In particular, codes of even length 2k, and of minimum distance approximately greater than d, where in the code obtained by restricting to the first k positions has even weight and at the same time the code obtained by restricting to the last k positions also has even weight are considered. If k = 2n, n odd, and d = 2n, it is proved that the code has at most 8n - 4 codewords, and 8n - 4 is attainable for n = 3. This permits a file-transfer protocol control function assignment for personal computers to be chosen for 20 control functions using essentially just pairs of upper-case alphabetic ASCII characters where the Hamming distance between the binary forms of every two different control functions is at least six.